Yearly Archives: 2007
Energy wisdom is knowing that you do not know
We should eschew forecasts, acknowledge unresolvable uncertainty and plan accordingly. The right energy policy is one of diversification – developing as many uncorrelated options as possible.
A safety compliance officer’s guide to facial hair
Business seeks clarity but demands sensitivity to particular circumstances, looks for certainty but resents detailed prescription, and as they grumble business people fail to recognise the incompatibility of these demands.
Conflicting creeds: how to value art, houses and Asian stock
For fundamentalists, the value of an asset is the sum of the returns it will yield over its life. For fellow travellers, an asset is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it.
Leaders should say goodbye to their haloes
There is no recipe for enduring excellence: the distinctive characteristics that yield competitive advantage, because they are hard to replicate or emulate, will inevitably be more appropriate for some conditions than for others.
Property rights and the wrong path to democracy
There are two methods of allocating property rights: Top down – by the dictates of a central administration – or bottom up – rights to land are acquired by working it.
Head office must be in the best place for business
The company headquarters should be the place from which the business can best be run. Location decisions often involve proximity to necessary resources. For banks, this nowadays means access to political and commercial capital.
Prudence is knowing that not all swans are white
Models are only as good as the correspondence between the model and the world, and this is where problems begin.
A separate Scotland would shed its sense of victimhood
The economic case for separatism is that it removes the focus of grievance and the source of subsidy and makes Scotland again responsible for its economic destiny.
Self-congratulation serves Scotland ill
The appeal of separatism in modern Scotland is linked to the country’s relative economic decline, as self- congratulation turns to grievance in response to failure.
BP and the crude task of balancing cost and danger
Making decisions that balance human life against costs is unavoidable. We prefer them to be made by public agencies than by private companies. And we deny that we make these judgments ourselves, although we do so every day.
